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The Cult’s Billy Duffy recently sat down with Mitch Gallagher of Sweetwater Sound to discuss his storied career and his signature Gretsch White Falcon.

Duffy noted that he was first turned on to the White Falcon via Neil Young, while Brian Setzer’s work in the Stray Cats similarly piqued his interest in Gretsch guitars.

“I’ve always been fascinated with Gretsches as guitars,” Duffy said. “Visually, I always thought it was some mythical beast.”

And once he purchased his original Gretsch, he found that it more than delivered from a performance perspective.

“I was searching for a sound, and people have said to me, ‘Why a Gretsch, and not a Les Paul?’” he explained. “I said, ‘Well, if you think of a Gretsch as an SUV, you wouldn’t drive it down a race track. And you wouldn’t drive a sports car off-road. They do different things.’

“And the other final thing was that I could only afford one guitar, and that was the one. It just became synonymous with the band.”

Join some of the world’s greatest Gretsch guitarists for a fascinating look at Gretsch guitars—their dazzling style, fantastic tone, colorful history and more. “The History and Magic of Gretsch Guitars” features artists including Duane Eddy, the Cult’s Billy Duffy, Jim “Reverend Horton Heat” Heath, Collective Soul’s Ed Roland, Brian Setzer, Billy Zoom and others, and takes you on a great guided tour of “That Great Gretsch Sound!”

It’s no surprise to hear that Billy Duffy loves his White Falcon. Seeing the Cult guitarist with the majestic Gretsch six-string is a common sight for Duffy fanatics. Recently, Total Guitar magazine sat down with Duffy to see how it all started.

“I always thought it was like a mythical kind of thing: this big, white semi-acoustic guitar,” said Duffy. “It was looks first.

“I really liked that Neil Young approach of getting a really aggressive sound out of a Gretsch,” he continued. “My high-school band was just slightly pre-punk. We got into stuff like Neil Young – sorta folky, rocky – and Neil Young and Crosby, Stills & Nash had them; that was the first time I saw the guitar. [Then] I joined Theater of Hate, took all my life’s savings and bought a guitar.”

For more on the interview with Billy Duffy pick up June’s issue of Total Guitarhere.

In Guitar Aficionado‘s May/June issue, the magazine reviews Billy Duffy’s new signature Gretsch White Falcon, based on the Gretsch 1975 single-cutaway 7593 that has been his main axe since forming the Cult.

“As the proud owner of a 1976 Gretsch 7593 White Falcon, I can attest that the G7593T Billy Duffy White Falcon is nearly identical when it comes to feel and playability,” writes GA author Chris Gill. “The Duffy model has the advantage of being slightly lighter and more comfortable, but the slim neck profile and the incredibly fast-playing fingerboard are one and the same.”

Gill also discusses its custom-wound pickups, noting that they “sound incredible through overdrive Marshall and Fender tweed amps, providing the distinctive midrange snarl that has made Filter’Trons one of the best choices for hard-rock rhythm playing, but without the feedback problems that afflict lower-output pickups.”